(092112)

Economics
and Global Change

•
Economics and Environment

Even with human advancements,
the world loses real Gross National Product (GNP; SXi 65-83). This
is only apparent when one factors pollution damage, resource degradation,
and other environmental variables into the cost of future business. For
example, Nigeria and the US. have lost 17% and 2% of their GNP, respectively,
due to soil erosion and environmental damage. For Nigeria the consequences
are obviously significant. What appears to be a small loss, again only 2%
in the US., amounts to 100 billion dollars in productivity (SXi 68). If
one adds cumulative, long-term, environmental degradation to annual production
losses, there is an ominous irreversible loss in the world’s future
agricultural base. These problems haunt humankind when limited food stores
are pressed further by population growth.

In recent time, businesses
operated on the premise that raw materials in, finished products out,
equals net monetary productivity. Profit is the bottom line. Resources,
treated as an infinite supply of material, are never in question. Economists
now know GNP calculations alone do not reveal the true relationship between
a nation’s economy and environmental health.

No nation can
say its economic activity is sustainable if it fails to replace the capital
that depreciates. Similarly, no nation will expand its future income unless
it invests in new capital.' (SXi 75)

The world’s
ozone layer, rain forests, potable water, top soil, and numerous elements
of the biosphere represent natural capital for each nation’s
audit books. To this I add human capital, which includes machines,
roads, factories, and vehicles. Elsewhere, industries and services emphasizing
use of renewable resources—recycled materials—begin a vital process
reducing the dependencies on non-renewable resources.

Remember, 77% of
the population earns 15% of the global income (SXi 65). Unless investments
are made regionally, people will continue to migrate to cities or other
localities where investments are concentrated. Offsetting global economic
inequity, by adding regional political and economic stability, requires
the North to invest in the peoples of the South. If this occurs—in
a way that instills social equity and builds affluence—population pressures
will ease because:

when livelihoods
are secure, ... only then does it become rational for poor people to limit
family size.' (SXi 53)

The World Bank estimates
when the income of poor people rises 1%, the general fertility rates drop
by 3%. Would you give away the proportion of your personal wealth that is
required to create equality for all of humankind? If this gesture slowed
population growth and insured the Earth’s preservation would you also
accept a smaller pay check? Your answer, yes or no, has a bearing on the
Earth’s future.

The window mirrors
change to show people are both the answer and the problem. I tend to think
that you would prefer to keep your money. Many of us are conditioned to
be slaves to autos, computers, appliances, buildings, and other material
possessions. These are the idols of materialism. The child is often taught
to possess—not distribute freely—and those who lived through depression
times store flour and sugar by the barrel. Humanity’s old habits are
hard to break. Would anyone freely bundle up the hoards stored in the North
to sent them to the South? Human nature seems too predictable for such an
unlikely event. The answers to many of humanity’s problems are that
simple, that outlandish, and so improbable. What conclusions are left to
us from this logic?

Conservation movements
and recycling programs emerge from the collective social consciousness.
But, recycling previously an option is now necessity, because land fills
are at maximum capacity and garbage disposal systems are over burdened.
Putting reusable waste into recycling requires mechanics to collect, store,
process and re-manufacture materials. In recent decades, prudent use of
the Earth was not the willful choice of the majority. The exceptions are
those individuals, like Henry Thoreau, who lived a least-impact life style,
wholly in the organic realm. He ate modestly, grew what he needed, sold
enough to buy what he couldn’t grow or make, and disturbed as little
of his environment as was necessary to make life sustainable. What Mr. Thoreau
consumed most was air, sights, and sounds—and he considered himself
wealthy for all these possessions and the life to enjoy them. Paradoxically,
modern consumerism has quickly built trash mounds as its memorials—monuments
that now generate methane and climate change.

• World Markets,
Competition, and Global Polarity

The world’s
economic systems are essentially asymmetric, lop-sided, creating a problem
for the South which can only respond with aggressiveness or defensive measures
for survival. The South sees global change as a negative economic scenario
because:

...the net transfer
of resources to the developing countries has been reversed—from a
positive flow of $42.6 billion in 1987 to a negative flow of $32.5 billion
in 1988; primary commodity prices, on which the economies of the Third
World countries significantly depend, have reached their lowest level
since the great depression of the 1930s. The foreign debts of the developing
countries, more than $103 trillion, now require nearly $200 billion a
year in debt servicing alone. In this environment, development takes place
much too slowly.' (SXi 150)

In 1982, Mexico and
42 other countries were unable to pay their loans. When faced with these
circumstances, many countries engage in short-term exploitation of crops
and other resources to quickly raise hard currency—typically US. dollars
in place of local devalued currency—to establish repayment of external
debt. The loan providers, mostly from the North, fear non-payment because
simultaneous failures by several of the largest debtor nations would paralyze
the global economy—in other words: global economic collapse. Keeping
the poor poor, keeps this possibility alive!

In the current economic
climate, one can reasonably expect to see a future realignment of nations.
Anticipation of future trade relations, competition, protectionism, and
other economic pacts or dependencies drive nations to form new trade alliances.
Trading blocks now form in the wake of the European Community’s (EC)
consummation of a unified system. Elsewhere, in the North, the United States,
Canada, and Mexico move to strengthen a unified block of trading nations
(NAFTA), while Asian and Pacific nations consider forming a Pacific Rim
block (APEC), and African nations talk of an African Economic Community.
Dr. Odhiambo states that nations today function as a fractured, dysfunctional,
human family (SXi 217). This is obvious where the world has drawn lines
of division. The trading blocks will compete with one another following
defensive patterns created from former bipolar inequities.

Trade wars and protectionism
are possible results of block formations and the North may perceive these
as the South’s mechanisms for economic extortion. As you will see later,
trading blocks are a key point which logically leads us to the future governing
system—made of ten global 'kingdoms’—which lock all
nations into a single global-political system.

This
is just one of many panes in the WindowView. This is a fraction of the
process identified earlier within the section entitled 'Convergence.'
Keep exploring the view, visit our page titled 'Experience
WindowView' to see how global changes are part of a larger holistic
paradigm which is the reason behind assembling this cyber-place. Putting
the picture together helps to envision humanity's direction along the
dimension of time.

A
copy of this text with footnotes and a complete listing of references
used in writing this text can be obtained by downloading the chapters
and reference list for the Creator's
Window. References that appear as ''(SXi #)'' signify the page number
from Sigma Xi's publication related to a 1991 forum on global change
(see reference list for the Creator's Window for a complete citation
of this work).

References from SXi and page number refer to the Sigma Xi Forum Proceedings: Global Change and the Human Prospect: Issues in Population, Science, Technology and Equity, November 1991. The importance of this science society's forum is that the meeting was forward looking and demonstrates how scientists from social, biological, and physical sciences all saw change on the rise. Not just climate change, but change in every aspect of human and earth affairs ... globally.

For a general listing of books, visit the WindowView Book Page for: Science and Scripture .

Step Up To Life

Time spent looking ... through a window on life and choice ... brings the opportunity to see in a new light. The offer for you to Step Up To Life is presented on many of the web pages at WindowView. Without further explanation we offer you the steps here ... knowing that depending on what you have seen or may yet explore in the window ... these steps will be the most important of your life ...